A case of "pure" word blindness

Kreindler, A

doi:10.1093/neucas/1.2.139-q

Cited by 5 publications

(6 citation statements)

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“…This result was documented in several fairly early reports of LBL patients (Albert, Yamadori, Gardner, & Howes, 1973;Caplan & Hedley-Whyte, 1974;Kreindler & Ionescu, 1961); ev en though the patients in these studies could not identify a written word overtly, they were still able to match this target with a word spoken by the investigator, or with a visually presented object. These initial observ ations of implicit or covert read ing abilities of LBL read ers in the absence of explicit identification have been upheld in a number of more recent studies.…”

Section: Lexical and Semantic Effects On Readingsupporting

confidence: 58%

“…Many of the excluded papers have a different focus and do not provide sufficient detail for our analysis; for exam ple, some papers focus on the anatom ical aspects of the case rather than on the reading performance per se (Ajax, 1967;Damasio & Damasio, 1983;Greenblatt, 1973), others describe aspects of the patient's performance such as the intact read ing of stenography (Regard, Landis, & Hess, 1985), an associated deficit in music read ing (Horikoshi et al, 1997), or associated colour deficits (Freed man & Costa, 1992), which are unrelated to the issue at hand, and yet other papers report a rehabilitation procedure for the patient without including much detail on the patients' pre-therapy reading perform ance (Kashi wagi & Kashi wagi, 1989;Tuomainen & Laine, 1991). There are also a small number of papers that are not included simply because the description of the patient's reading is unclear or insufficiently detailed for our purposes (Caplan & Hedley-White, 1974;Kreindler & Ionescu, 1961), although we hav e generally made reference to these papers elsewhere in the text. We are also aware of posters of LBL read ers presented at conferences and have not included those (with the exception of the Vigliocco, Semenza, & Neglia, 1992, because the description of the patients is sufficiently detailed).…”

Section: Review Of Published Cases Of Letter-by-letter Readingmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A Literature Review and New Data Supporting an Interactive Account of Letter-by-Letter Reading

Behrmann

Plaut²,

Nelson³

1998

Cognitive Neuropsychology

146

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We present a theoretical account of letter-by-letter reading (LBL) that reconciles discrepant findings associated with this form of acquired dyslexia. We claim that LBL reading is caused by a deficit that affects the normal activation of the orthographic representation of the stimulus. In spite of this lower-level deficit, the degraded orthographic information may be processed further, and lexical, semantic, and higher-order orthographic information may still influence the reading patterns of these patients. In support of our position, we present a review of 57 published cases of LBL reading in which we demonstrate that a peripheral deficit was evident in almost all of the patients and that, simultaneously, strong effects of lexical/ semantic variables were observed on reading performance. We then go on to report findings from an empirical analysis of seven LBL readers in whom we document the joint effects of lexical variables (word frequency and imageability) and word length on naming latency. We argue that the reading performance of these patients reflects the residual functioning of the same interactive system that supported normal reading premorbidly.

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Section: Lexical and Semantic Effects On Readingsupporting

confidence: 58%

Section: Review Of Published Cases Of Letter-by-letter Readingmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Literature Review and New Data Supporting an Interactive Account of Letter-by-Letter Reading

Behrmann

Plaut²,

Nelson³

1998

Cognitive Neuropsychology

146

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…Once letter identification has reached an acceptable level, training is then geared toward improving speed and accuracy of reading. The benefit of tactile/kinesthetic input to assist in letter naming was acknowledged by Goldstein (1948) and documented in a number of subsequent case reports across a variety of language systems (Kashiwagi & Kashiwagi, 1989; Kreindler & Ioansescu, 1961; LaPointe & Kraemer, 1983; Luria, 1970, Stachowiack & Poeck, 1976). Of particular interest are studies that experimentally controlled for the specific effects of tactile or kinesthetic treatment in alexia with impaired letter naming.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 95%

Multimodal alexia: Neuropsychological mechanisms and implications for treatment

et al. 2011

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Letter-by-letter (LBL) reading is the phenomenon whereby individuals with acquired alexia decode words by sequential identification of component letters. In cases where letter recognition or letter naming is impaired, however, a LBL reading approach is obviated, resulting in a nearly complete inability to read, or global alexia. In some such cases, a treatment strategy wherein letter tracing is used to provide tactile and/or kinesthetic input has resulted in improved letter identification. In this study, a kinesthetic treatment approach was implemented with an individual who presented with severe alexia in the context of relatively preserved recognition of orally spelled words, and mildly impaired oral/written spelling. Eight weeks of kinesthetic treatment resulted in improved letter identification accuracy and oral reading of trained words; however, the participant remained unable to successfully decode untrained words. Further testing revealed that, in addition to the visual-verbal disconnection that resulted in impaired word reading and letter naming, her limited ability to derive benefit from the kinesthetic strategy was attributable to a disconnection that prevented access to letter names from kinesthetic input. We propose that this kinesthetic-verbal disconnection resulted from damage to the left parietal lobe and underlying white matter, a neuroanatomical feature that is not typically observed in patients with global alexia or classic LBL reading. This unfortunate combination of visual-verbal and kinesthetic-verbal disconnections demonstrated in this individual resulted in a persistent multimodal alexia syndrome that was resistant to behavioral treatment. To our knowledge, this is the first case in which the nature of this form of multimodal alexia has been fully characterized, and our findings provide guidance regarding the requisite cognitive skills and lesion profiles that are likely to be associated with a positive response to tactile/kinesthetic treatment.

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“…Previous research has demonstrated that such patients are able to use tactile and/or kinesthetic input to improve their letter naming. For example, patients have been trained to invoke kinesthetic input by copying, then naming, each letter of a word in sequence and then recognizing the word they thereby orally spelled (Goldstein, 1948; Luria, 1970; Stachowiak & Poeck, 1976), or to use a combination of tactile and kinesthetic input by tracing embossed or sandpapered letters (Godwin, 1983; Kreindler & Ionasescu, 1961; LaPointe & Kraemer, 1983). More recently, Sage, Hesketh & Lambon Ralph (2005) reported a solely tactile approach in which a helper traced each letter onto the patient’s hand and said the letter name, which the patient then repeated.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Overt use of a tactile/kinaesthetic strategy shifts to covert processing in rehabilitation of letter-by-letter reading

et al. 2010

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Background Letter-by-letter readers identify each letter of the word they are reading serially in left to right order before recognizing the word. When their letter naming is also impaired, letter-by-letter reading is inaccurate and can render even single word reading very poor. Tactile and/or kinesthetic strategies have been reported to improve reading in these patients, but only under certain conditions or for a limited set of stimuli. Aims The primary aim of the current study was to determine whether a tactile/kinesthetic treatment could significantly improve reading specifically under normal reading conditions, i.e. reading untrained words presented in free vision and read without overt use of the strategy. Methods & Procedures Three chronic letter-by-letter readers participated in a tactile/kinesthetic treatment aimed at first improving letter naming accuracy (phase 1) and then letter-by-letter reading speed (phase 2). In a multiple case series design, accuracy and speed of reading untrained words without overt use of the trained tactile/kinesthetic strategy was assessed before phase 1, after phase 1 and again after phase 2. Outcomes & Results All three patients significantly improved both their speed and accuracy reading untrained words without overt use of the trained tactile/kinesthetic strategy. All three patients required the additional practice in phase 2 to achieve significant improvement. Treatment did not target sentence level reading, yet two of the three patients became so adept that they could read entire sentences. Conclusions This study replicates previous findings on the efficacy of tactile/kinesthetic treatment for letter-by-letter readers with poor letter naming. It further demonstrates that this treatment can alter cognitive processing such that words never specifically trained can be read in free vision without overtly using the trained strategy. The data suggest that an important element in achieving this level of generalization is continuing training beyond the point of initial mastery (i.e. accurate letter naming).

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A case of "pure" word blindness

Cited by 5 publications

References 0 publications

A Literature Review and New Data Supporting an Interactive Account of Letter-by-Letter Reading

A Literature Review and New Data Supporting an Interactive Account of Letter-by-Letter Reading

Multimodal alexia: Neuropsychological mechanisms and implications for treatment

Overt use of a tactile/kinaesthetic strategy shifts to covert processing in rehabilitation of letter-by-letter reading

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